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Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Delicious mocha fudge (for Coffee Set Match)

Our friend Mike, whose
birthday it is today, is a big fan of fudge. I made some rum &
raisin for a sweetie stall I was running at the local Christmas fair,
and he devoured a bag of it in about five minutes. Normally I make
him a birthday cake, but this year I thought I’d make him some
fudge instead, and as he loves coffee and I’m trying to think of
lots of interesting things to do with coffee for Lavazza’s CoffeeSet Match, instead of bogstandard vanilla (not that there’s
anything wrong with that!), tonight Mike will be receiving a big bag
of mocha fudge!

Nom.

Whatever kind of fudge
you’re making, I have a few little tips for you:

Use a big pan.
Seriously. When you boil sugar, it bubbles up to quite a height. I
started off with my biggest non-stick pan and it boiled over and made
a horrible mess, so I poured it into my 6.5l pressure cooker to
finish it off.

Use a sugar
thermometer, and make sure it works (dip it into boiling water, it
should say 100 degrees C, or 212 F).

If you overcook or
overbeat the fudge and it goes too hard or too grainy, don’t fret.
You can probably rescue it. Tip it back into a clean pan along with
half a cup of water, heat it slowly till it all dissolves, and boil
it back up again to soft ball stage (118 C). It might come out a bit
darker than usual, but it’ll be fine.

This recipe is infinitely
adaptable. You can replace the coffee with a shot of any booze you
like, vary the type of sugar (granulated for vanilla fudge, dark
muscovado for something like rum & raisin), leave out the
chocolate or add a different type, add dried fruit or nuts or
marshmallow or just about whatever you fancy. But for the purposes
of Mike’s birthday, we’re sticking with mocha!

Ingredients:

1 large tin of evaporated
milk (Carnation is 397g, the Co-Op own brand stuff I used is 410g –
it varies from brand to brand but just get something around that
size)

Place the evaporated
milk, milk, coffee, butter and sugar in your biggest saucepan and
heat slowly over a low heat while stirring with a wooden spoon until
everything dissolves. It will look very runny but don’t worry,
it’ll thicken up.

It's not easy to stir boiling fudge and take a photo at the same time! Keep your fingers out, it's VERY hot.

Turn the heat up and
bring to the boil. Continue to boil while stirring constantly and
scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon (important! It
will catch if you don’t and you’ll have horrible burnt-tasting
black bits). You need to keep it boiling until it reaches 118
degrees C or 240 F on a sugar thermometer – this will probably take
about 15 or 20 minutes. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can
boil it for about 15 minutes and then try the soft ball test – drop
a little bit of the mixture into a glass of cold water. If it forms
a soft ball that you can roll together with your fingers, it’s
done. If not, keep boiling and check again in a few minutes).

Waiting for it to set...

When it reaches the magic
temperature, take it off the heat, add the chopped chocolate, stir
till it’s melted in and let it cool for a few minutes. Then beat
it and beat it and beat it some more with the wooden spoon. As
you’ve already been stirring for about 20 minutes, you’re
probably exhausted by now so if you have a willing helper, now would
be a good time to enlist their assistance! Alternatively you could
put it in a food mixer with the paddle beater on a low heat, but keep
an eye on it as if you over-beat it will go very grainy. The mixture
will thicken up. Pour it into a greased tin (I like using silicone
bakeware for fudge) and put it in the fridge for an hour or two to
firm up. Then turn out, cut into squares, and try to resist stuffing
it all into your mouth at once as it’ll probably make you sick.

The recipe I’ve given
here makes a cupful plus some…

My lovely assistant

…although it’s a very
big cup!

Let’s hope the birthday
boy likes it.

Don’t forget to
enter the competition at Lavazza to win lots of Wimbledon goodies, including pairs of tickets to Wimbledon, Lavazza A Modo Mio Favola Plus
Wimbledon Limited Edition coffee machines and exclusive sets of
espresso cups created especially for the tournament.